Sock times I absolutely agree with. You never re-wear socks. Ever. Hoodies, though, usually have a much longer wearability window than 36 hours. Unless this roommate is a total slob and is constantly spilling stuff on his clothes, I would give outerwear at least a week of wear before washing, if not more.

I’ve reworn socks. Because I hate them. So there have been times where I get home and take my socks off as soon as I get home and it seems dumb to wear a pair of socks for an hour and then put another pair on later that day when I have to go out again.

Just… why would anybody do this? Why would anyone go out of their way to be a condescending prick when confronting someone that they have to live with about a sensitive issue? Like, they could have just said, “Oh, by the way, no offense, but your clothes or your bed are getting a little stinky. Can you please do your laundry in case you have something growing in there?” It would be saying the exact same thing but causing minimal embarrassment to the roommate. It’s super easy. Then you can actually have a friendly relationship for the rest of however long you’re forced to live together without your roommate being afraid you’re going to go out of your way to humiliate them at the slightest displeasure.

When my nose was stuffed and I couldn’t smell anything, my roommate had to nicely ask me to clean my mice’s cage. I cleaned it, and then made sure to change their bedding more often after that. Problem solved. If she’d given me a note like this, I would’ve cleaned the cage (for the sake of the mice), and then made sure to fix myself a big plate of refried beans and broccoli for dinner every day for the rest of the week

#2 – No, not butthurt, and not dirty – I’m the only one in my apartment who wasn’t too lazy to clean the dead bugs out of the soap dispenser and kitchen cupboards, actually. I’m also baffled about why anyone would go out of their way to make someone they have to live with not like them.

Sometimes you have to be extra blunt with some people. Cause otherwise they just won’t get it even if you scream at them, “YOU STINK MORE THAN A FULL GARBAGE TRUCK LEFT FOR A MONTH IN THE HOTTEST PART OF SUMMER DOUSED IN FREBREEZE!”

Well, actually, the unholy results if a mad scientist was able to splice the DNA of Dogbert with the DNA of Mandy from The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy and create a whole new creature from them. That would be my spirit animal.

@Jami: It’s not really about being blunt though. If the note said something like “YOUR BED SMELLS LIKE ROTTEN EGGS, WASH YOUR SHEETS ALREADY” it would be one thing and I would totally be Team Notewriter, because that would give me the impression that they had been asked several times and weren’t responding to a polite tone. This note, however, doesn’t read as blunt so much as “trying to sound witty and superior”, which is not a tone you want to take when chastising someone. Especially not someone who lives with you. It’s not effective and it’s a guarantee that you and that person will be miserable for the rest of the time you have to spend together.

@Rory – My first thought is that the note writer has something like Aspergers. Maybe not that itself but possibly something very like it so this is the only way they can really express themselves.

My second thought is the person the note is made out to might be very much like my 6th grade teacher. I’ve mentioned her before, haven’t I? If not here’s the main details -

1: She believed you should only bathe once every three days and never use antiperspirant or perfume. Claiming “the body has a natural odor that is beautiful.” So she would be very, very stinky and even if you told her that her BO was so bad it was making you ill, she’d insist you were wrong and that she smelled beautiful. So she could use a note like this.

2: She also would tell us how we were all going to be homeless and jobless in the future because robots were going to take over all the jobs and it was all Reagan’s fault.

3: Then we’d all die in the coming ice age caused by global cooling.

She treated me (and many other kids) like utter shit because we took baths every day and used antiperspirant. According to her logic I was the sole cause behind the hole in the ozone layer. (It made it harder that my father is a scientist who specializes in making fossil fuels more environmentally sound, so I could bring evidence that everything she was saying – right down to how using Listerine was poisoning the water table – was utter crap and she wouldn’t believe it. She was right and everyone else was wrong.)

I think a long note to someone like her would actually be more effective because it would knock her down a peg or five. At least, I would hope so. Though she did get demoted a few years after I left elementary school behind and I hear she was still pretty damn bad about the bathing thing.

The final thought is Mr. Stinky might actually not know these things. Like I said in a post down below it might be that his mom did all his laundry for him and never taught him how to do it. And she didn’t tell him how bad he smelled. So he never learned proper hygiene.

In fact, I will confess I don’t know how to iron clothing because mom never taught me and even though I’ve asked her repeatedly she just rattles off instructions – even though she knows I learn better seeing and doing, not being told – so I know when she finally dies I’m either going to have to buy a lot of wrinkle resistant clothing, or just wear a lot of things with wrinkles. Cause I don’t know how to iron.

@Jami: I’m autistic and I’d never do this. In my experience people with AS are more likely to say something in a blunt way that people take more harshly than intended than they are to write… something like this. Some of us do use a lot of big words or go into details about specialized interests when talking to others who don’t share that knowledge, but the big words aren’t really the problem with what the notewriter is doing. The notewriter is, on top of using overly scientific words in a context where they aren’t necessary, going out of his/her way to point out things that will humiliate the note’s recipient as much as possible. For example, he/she points out how often the roommate farts… something that a lot of people are embarrassed about and prefer goes unnoticed; now the roommate is going to feel even more self-conscious about it… not to mention they’ll be creeped out that their roommate pays so much attention to what they do in their sleep. Plus writing down all those instructions – I suppose it’s possible for the laundry and stuff that the roommate genuinely needs it (though it’s not like it’s difficult to figure out and if they really did want to know they could just ask the RA how to use the machines), but there’s no way instructions like “If this causes excessive sweating, take another shower” are meant to be genuinely helpful. So… I’m definitely getting “Douchebag who cares more about belittling their roommate than they do about solving the cleanliness problem” vibes here. And while it’s still possible that they have AS or something, that’s not a cause behind their behavior nor is it an excuse for it.

Now, as far as your teacher goes… first of all I must express my greatest sympathies that you had to spend nine months dealing with that level of batshittery. o__0 Not to mention odor.

But I didn’t really get the impression that the roommate was openly defying the idea of hygiene like your teacher was. I assume they just spilled something somewhere or left their laundry in the hamper too long. I guess neither of us can know for sure. And while I am a firm believer in the cause of knocking terrible teachers down a peg, I don’t really think that applies in this case. Poor authority figures often have to be humiliated because they think they’re too good to listen to valid criticism, but for someone who’s in an equal relationship? You don’t have to knock them down a few pegs because you’re already on their level. Unless they do act superior, but I see no reason to believe this roommate was acting that way… and I think if they had a superiority complex and it was related to their hygiene problems, the notewriter would have found a way to point it out in the note.

I said something like it – doesn’t mean it’s exactly that. He could have something we don’t even know about yet. Random people say they think I have Aspergers because I can be obsessive and overly detailed, completely over explaining things. Course I have a father who’s a scientist who over explains everything himself. So I think it’s just a learned behavior in me.

I mean, we don’t know exactly all the different weird ways the human brain can be wired. Note writer could have some strange wiring no one has diagnosed yet or even discovered because people jump to other assumptions.

Agreed. This guy is going out of his way to be offensive. All that was needed was a conversation. And the fart-interval counting? Yeesh. I’m picturing him lying awake, listening and counting on his abacus.

And the overall NEATNESS of the print says a great deal about the overreaching prissiness of the notewriter, just in case the general content didn’t give him/her away. I’ll bet Major Cleanup has undies for every day of the week, with two spares at all times.

The funniest part about it is that he thinks the housemate is actually going to bother to read that note of Tolstoyan proportions.

Dude, you’re talking to a person who can’t take 10-20 minutes a week to go down to the laundry machine and put his clothes in there. Do you honestly think he’s going to use that 10 minutes to read your note?

He can read the note while he’s doing his laundry. I know that multi-tasking is generally frowned upon these days, but I still think that reading can be partnered up with any number of activities that include a somewhat more passive component (laundry, subway, sex, etc.)

Even Tolystoy is more concise when it comes to airing his characters’ complaining. Neither “War and Peace” nor “Anna Karenina” and would have been as long if the characters had names like Jim and Bob and Mary or Lisa.

The sad part for me is that this is an exercise in futility – I was a stinky roommate (sorry, roomies! I had undiagnosed depression!) and this letter would just make me more depressed and more stinky. Just report them to the RA and get a room reassignment.

That is the part that weirded me out the most. The letter was totally unnecessary, he should have just talked to the guy. But timing your roommate’s farts so you can use it as a weapon in a passive aggressive note against them later is INSANE. “Your farting is a problem. Here is the data, I recorded it myself. While you were sleeping.”

Might be left over from when he was a small boy, Juniper, and obsessed with farts the way many children are. I can still name many alternative ways to become, repel, or kill a vampire even years after my obsessive reading of vampire mythology has passed. For instance, did you know you can use cow poop that’s been found in a thorn bush to repel vampires? Can’t just be any cow poop though. The cow had to have pooped in a thorn covered bush for it to work.

Make sure that you’re not being a direct or indirect embodiment of schadenfreude.

Oh, that train has so sailed, Anonymous Germophobic Roommate With Severely Impaired Interpersonal Communication Skills. Is it OK if I just call you Agrwussicks? I like it because it has “wuss” in it.

No, the note is not “direct and to the point” or “just trying to be helpful” or whatever lie you’ve told yourself. The note is, to the extent that anyone could think it’s okay to write something this batshit-insane and present it to another human being, Exhibit A in your commitment hearing for the psych ward.

And when that time comes, let me predict — since you clearly don’t understand what “schadenfreude” actually means — that there will be a crowd of people taking delight in your misfortune.

@Poltergeist: Stolen from the first Austin Powers movie, so I can’t take credit. I just use it All. The. Time!

@derp: Hi there, Agrwussicks, welcome back! I must say, we’re quite privileged to have received two visits from you already, on the posting of your note! I only wish the online medium could do justice to the impeccable penmanship your comments are no doubt typed in.

I have to admit I’m curious, so I’m hoping you’ll favor us with one of your trademark condescendingly-detailed explanations: “derp” is self-explanatory, no mystery there. But when you replied to comment #3 as “MLRS” — what’s the meaning of that name?

team notewriter simply because i once had that roommate . . . before the end of the year, i began tracking how frequently she changed clothes and showered. she typically only showered once a week and only changed clothes twice a week . . . she slept in the same clothes and everything. she also liked to do things like leave half a tuna sandwich under a halogen lamp and go to class, which meant the room reeked when i got back . . . talking to her accomplished nothing, talking to the ra accomplished nothing, and there were no rooms available to move to. sooooo, college dorm hell . . . yes, team notewriter.

I would be team notewriter, too, if the notewriter hadn’t gone completely over the top. I do think commenters are leaning heavily on one side of the issue (because people who don’t perform basic hygiene to prevent stinking up for everyone else) are pretty rude, but otoh there are sometimes medical conditions that can cause odor, and it looks like roommate went out of their way to be as douchey as possible about it.

Team Notewriter. I’ve seen this in a dorm. The guy was so unwashed and filthy the hall stank within 6 feet of his door. He got fined for the filth they had to literally shovel out of his room at Christmas (he had to move because it was uninhabitable) and a couch he claimed as his own in the common room smelled so bad after 4 months of him parking on it, the administrators threw it out.

My dorm experience has been more, shall we say, regimented? ie. military barracks. Long notes were NOT required. Fortunately, daily room inspections took care of the unwashed laundry piles, at least, and daily personnel inspections required a ready supply of clean clothes.
As far as personal hygiene goes, I’ve also lived aboard ship – even closer quarters than a dorm or barracks. As a petty officer, I shared a space the size of a typical dorm room with 9 adult males. All were fully aware of the consequences of poor personal hygiene, so it never was an issue.
Not so for the rank and file – there was once a sailor nicknamed (in the ever-so-witty style of sailors) ‘Stinky’. Despite repeated warnings from fellow shipmates and lectures from senior PO’s, Stinky still didn’t ‘clean up his act’. Some of the crew approached the hospital corpsman who issued out scrub brushes and pHisohex soap (google it), and said ‘don’t get any in his eyes.’ Stinky was pulled out of his bunk around midnight by a squad of bunk-mates who ripped off his clothes, held him down, and scrubbed him raw, then threw him (and his clothes) into the shower. Problem solved.
Smelly roommate should consider himself lucky it was just a note.

How disappointing! If not for that one slip, that one discordance in an otherwise perfectly anal-retentive sermon, the note-writer would have apotheosized to become the demigod of didactic douchebaggery.

The most disturbing thing about this note is that Writer believes farts produce fecal residue. Maybe Writer needs to change their diet.

Also does Writer really think that Stinker will read this long-ass crazy note and think “Wow! How considerate! Writer personally hand-wrote the Body Hygiene, Laundry, Odor Prevention and Timed Farting Manual just for me. My days of never changing my socks and sleeping in a nest of stink are over, starting now. I will have this document laminated and refer to it daily. How did I ever manage before Writer?”

All odour is particulate. That being the case, wouldn’t a fart be comprised at least partially of fecal matter (sharts being an extreme example of)? Not being a wiseacre, simply being genuinely scientifically curious.

What you smell IS particles. Think about air freshened. It works by being sprayed into the air, where the scent chemicals are breathed in by you and they coat the insides of your sinus cavity…which is why/how the air freshened works.

Tht is how everything is smelled by us. It is just that natural particles coating the inside of your nose *generally* is preferable to the chemicals in man-made products.

Recognizable smells are specific combinations of airborne molecules called “odorants”. Odorants are chemical vapors which must permeate a mucous membrane to bond with olfactory receptors. Particulates would neither permeate the membrane nor bond chemically with the receptors.

True and not. Our sense of smell works by detecting “odorants”, which are molecules given off by volatile substances (like feces or plants or chemicals, but not steel or dry concrete) that are carried through the air.

But that doesn’t mean that the odorant molecules released when we fart are really, well, “particles of shit”, any more than the scent of a rose is made of “particles of flower”. (Think about it, how would you smell a fart through your clothing? Do you think particles of crap strain through denim?)

It’s only the odorant molecules that come off of feces, that are microscopic enough to both be airborne, and to pass through clothing and other barriers. But no matter how many of them you were to collect together, you would never end up with a turd. There are far larger molecules, and even whole bacteria, contained in feces. Those aren’t airborne. Something as complex as waste isn’t made up of just one kind of uniform, identical molecule. It takes a (shitty) village.

(Air freshener is something of a red herring, since it’s basically nothing but odorants carried in an accelerant under pressure. Which has little to do with how scent works for other matter — meaning solids or liquids that give off their scent “passively”, not by forcing it into the atmosphere through a propellant medium.)

Wouldn’t farts contain residue just based on the fact that it’s pressurized air trying to work its way out from behind fecal masses? Like how sneezes are part mucus and saliva? And that’s why it’s possible to get pink eye from getting farted on, yeah?

@Skyle: Sure, which is why a “wet fart” can soil your underwear. But that residue will all be stopped by clothing. (Man, this is getting gross.)

(I have no idea, BTW, how my previous reply managed to miss Kwyjor’s reply from many hours before, immediately preceding it. But, for the record, what I wrote was written without any knowledge that I was basically repeating him/her.)

Josh, sorry to disabuse you of your ignorance, but farts are composed of fecal matter particles, granted they art microparticulates, but they are still particularized fecal matter, along with the hydrogen sulfide & other hydrylsulfyls called thiols, along with other gases. The FAA had a study a number of years ago that analyzed the contents of old airline seats, particularly those that were composed of cloth-covered foam, & the largest contaminant found, by far, in terms of weight percentage, was fecal matter. So how did a large amount of fecal matter get into the foam cushions? Occam’s Razor, by farting which injected them at high velocity directly into the foam matrix. Even if there were only a small amount in each fart, the sheer number of them over the years would lead to a sizable accumulation. There was a great article on Salon about 15 years ago interviewing a doctor who specialized so much in gastrointestinal disorders that his colleagues called him Dr. Fart, & he stated that everyone farts, & on average between 12 to 60 times a day. So your prissy disdain is unwarranted as I would imagine you fart, on average, somewhere directly between those two numbers.

They’re the solid grey ones with an almost iridescent fur. If Colin is anything to go by, they are affectionate as all get out, but have to have things their own way. Also just the most awesome hunter we’ve ever had – the rats he’s taking down are fully grown, not the wee almost-cute baby rats our other boys terminate, although I do appreciate their efforts as well.

I’ve timed my cat’s farts, that’s how I know to clean his litterbox. I’ve tried telling him about his hygiene problems with a PAN, but he still keeps farting on cloth items that I have PILED TO DO LATER. Effin’ cats.

I will never understand why people voluntarily choose to live in campus housing. You’re paying obscene amounts of money to live in sub-par conditions, eat beans and pasta at twice the markup with people you may not even get along with. And depending on the school, they make you leave as soon as you’re done writing your last exam.

And you “have” to take all this shit for the same price you would be paying renting an apartment by yourself* and/or with people you actually like and get along with. (*unless you live in NYC, London, SF or other obscenely expensive city.)

I know of a few colleges that require freshmen to live on campus, because, I suppose, they can’t be trusted to behave themselves and show up to class without supervision. Otherwise, I don’t know why people would chose to dorm.

I know that the New England private ivy colleges require students to live in the dorms. However they do have huge endowment funds that they use to maintain the buildings. The food is actual cooked food instead of just heated beans, the dining halls are open at practically all times so that you can eat after your late classes are over instead of having to go elsewhere and they don’t kick people out during the breaks. So I don’t think it’s comparable to the majority of cases where the schools just prey on parental paranoia/insecurity to get their children to stay in the dorms.

Well, it’s easier for everyone involved. On top of all the other adjustments that 18 year olds have to make when entering college, finding an apartment, signing a lease, arranging for gas and electricity, buying all their groceries, and all the other things an adult has to do is far too much. With the dorms, the college takes care of all of that for you. All you have to do is get a phone, and these days everyone already has a cell anyway.

Because the Bank of Mom and Dad would pay for a dorm but not for an apartment.

Hey, I wasn’t going to turn it down. I must admit it made it very easy to get to all my classes, my on-campus job, and my boyfriend. It takes away some of the fun out of a spontaneous booty call when you have to take the bus.

Yeah, my school required all freshmen to live on campus. (And this was 20 years ago.)

AIUI the practice is becoming increasingly common, because if schools spend all this money on building housing they want to make damn sure it’s going to be occupied!

They also like collecting their fat rent checks. Being a landlord is good business for many schools nowadays, especially ones in out-of-the-way areas where other options are limited. Those other options are often cheaper, though, so if you’re a cynic perhaps that explains the requirement. I mean, $2000 per semester for housing? I feel like that’s less than I paid (though mine probably included meals) — and like I said, 20 years ago!

As a parent you’ve failed if your child turns 18 and can’t figure out how to order utilities or rent an apartment. I know, most parents do fail their children this way, so it’s not like it’s unusual. But really, by the time you’re helping them get their driver’s license is about the time you take them to pay each bill by hand at least once, and introduce them to your landlord.

If you own, you could substitute explaining your rental experience. Nothing has changed in the process for the past 50+ years other than finding out if the place is segregated or not.

As for groceries, don’t parents bring their children on grocery trips anymore? Even if they don’t, the ghrelins will hammer it home.

And make them do laundry at least once! Man alive! And heck, give them a bus pass for a month.

As a parent you’ve failed if your child turns 18 and can’t figure out how to order utilities or rent an apartment. I know, most parents do fail their children this way, so it’s not like it’s unusual.

Oh, good, be a condescending prick. That’ll get your point across.

Nothing has changed in the process for the past 50+ years other than finding out if the place is segregated or not.

Now, that’s patently untrue. I’m glad you said it, though, because it makes it clear just how out-of-touch you really are.

Do you realize (of course you don’t) that most landlords — or management companies, since renting directly from private landlords is becoming less and less common — run credit checks on prospective tenants nowadays? That’s often what trips up the 18-25 set, in trying to find a place to live. It’s not a matter of not being able to “figure out” (ass) the process, it’s a matter of the world not trusting them to be renters. Hardly their fault, or their parents’.

On the matter of knowing the basics of how to care for yourself, cook, and clean, I’m with you there. Plus, we have this thing called the internet, where you can learn how to do nearly anything for yourself.

FeRD, I wasn’t alive during the Roosevelt administration, but I bet that even then nobody would rent you an apartment if you didn’t have a job or steady income coming in from somewhere. You needed a co-signer then like you do one now.

That’s how the vast majority of people who don’t live in the dorms get apartments nowadays, and that’s how they probably did it back then, too.

And I’m sorry, but if you are smart enough to get into college and can make sure that there’s beer in your fridge, you’re perfectly capable of ensuring that your utility bills are paid on time. Especially now when you don’t even have to remember to mail a check because you can pay (almost) all your bills through the internets.

Even now, less than half the country has a college education and they can handle keeping an apartment, so it isn’t that hard. This is really is infantalizing people who know better.

I think there’s a lot of value in living on campus for your first year, especially if, like me, you go to school away from home. It can make it easier to meet people, and it helps you get adjusted in stages to life away from home. I could certainly have managed an apartment (although, yes, I would have had to have a co-signer) but I wanted to get comfortable with the city and living 1800+ km away from my family before I took that step.

Also, initial setup of an apartment is pretty costly — in London, ON, when I was getting my first apartment, you had to put a $150 deposit on the power bill (or credit check), $50 on phone (no credit check option), and, of course, last month’s rent as a damage deposit. And you have to furnish the apartment — not just with furniture, but also with kitchen gear, etc. You’ll have to do it eventually, of course, but it does wipe out some of the cost difference.

That said, I think the idea of REQUIRING people to live in residence in first year is silly. My university did offer guaranteed residence to any first year student who wanted it, but that’s different from making it mandatory.

The reason that freshmen students are required to live on campus is that there were high rates of dropouts of students, which played hell with their ratings of degree completions. Keeping the freshmen on campus their first year ensured that there would be a more rigorous academic environment, such as it is, because I’ve also lived on & off campus, but I went back to college as an older student, so there wasn’t much of a difference for me. Most landlords won’t rent to 18/19/20 year olds without a co-signer, usually their parental units. It’s always been my experience that alcohol & partying (i.e. drugs) play a very large part in students failing college their first time around, so keeping them on campus was also a way of keeping them from drinking to excess as well.

Yes, I can easily imagine the police finding a to-do list in this nice, neat handwriting.

“The voices in my head are bothering me. To remedy this problem, I will:
* Take a long, thorough shower.
* Clean my guns. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
* Put on my best military surplus camo.
* Slaughter all of my former roommates.
* If this produced excess sweating, take another shower.
* Bury them in my crawlspace within 72 hours. DO NOT PILE THEM TO DO LATER.”

If this is a dorm situation, I’d say johnny notewriter needs his own room. This is on some “doesn’t play well with others” nonsense. “Hey, do your laundry” would’ve been fine, “Follow two pages worth of rules” is more I’m gonna kill you in your sleep.

Letter Writer had me on his side with those words. But how on earth did he think the next two (handwritten!) pages of general craziness were going to help? You write the two pages of craziness for yourself, to make yourself feel better. Then you tuck it away and never share it with anyone else.

To maybe actually solve your problem, you write a note like this:

For fuck’s sake dude! Change your bed sheets, change your underwear once in a while, do your laundry, shower every day*, and see a fucking doctor about the fucking farting!

*With soap! Bathing in Axe doesn’t count!

It’s still a candidate for this website, but it might actually be productive.

Assuming this is between males, it could be that Mr. Stinky never learned to do his own laundry. Mommy dearest might’ve done it all for him and reminded him to take a bath and so he’s never had to deal with reality.

Kind of like that commercial where the mom keeps telling her son it’s time for dinner and then it shows him in college unpacking pots and pans and not knowing how to use them.

I heard a story once about a guy who mailed his laundry to his grandmother when he went to college and she washed it, ironed it, folded it, and mailed it back. o.O

My brother is somewhat similar. He was taught how to do his own laundry in middle school like I was, but he doesn’t do it at school. He wears everything he owns five times and the stuffs it all in a giant mesh bag and does his laundry at home on breaks.

I guess it saves him money – but I’m glad I don’t have to be around him when he’s at school.

Once when I didn’t have laundry money I handwashed my clothes. I do rewear clothes pretty often if I’ve managed to go a day without getting them too sweaty, but I can’t imagine going a whole semester without washing. Or lugging my entire wardrobe back and forth from school to home.

Oh, me too. Pants and hoodies last a while, as well as tanks and sweats/shorts that I pretty much only wear at home. A shirt can be worn twice if the first day was only part of the day and I didn’t sweat while wearing it.

But the extent to which my brother re-wears and piles things…I’m glad I’m not his roommate, either. o.o

Jami, when I first read your post (on how Mr. Stinky probably just doesn’t know how to do laundry do to Mommy Dearest doing everything for her precious snowflake) I agreed with it. Then I thought of something:

Since when is ignorance an excuse? It’s not like laundry is difficult. There are instructions on the machine. And with the advent of the internet, all people need to do is go to wikihow or yahoo answers or about and find a step by step instruction. These people are adults, even if they haven’t been taught to be adults. If they’re used to having fresh laundry, their noses will tell them that they need to learn now or risk embarrassment.

Raichu, I can understand sending laundry to grandma. My grandma does awesome laundry–the woman irons sheets! Have you ever slept on ironed sheets? I’m in my 30s with my own kids and husband, but we moved in with my grandma for a week while having some plumbing work done on our house. During that week clean clothes just magically appeared in our rooms, beautifully folded with that crisp, fresh smell that ironed clothes have. I didn’t want to move out at the end of the week.

With a letter this long, I started to read it closely, then got bored and began to skim. Thus, my reading experience was a little like this:

“…..the bacteria feed on human excretions…. DO NOT PILE THEM TO DO LATER. ”

What, the bacteria or the human excretions? Because, really, if you need to tell people not to pile their bacteria, you have roommate issues beyond what can be solved through roommate mediation. Human excretions naturally piles itself, but hopefully in a toilet where it is easily disposed of.

Yeah, this is one of those notes where you start off agreeing with the original point but can’t actually bring yourself to take the notewriter’s side because they come off as an anal-retentive lunatic which in turn causes you to question the the validity of their initial complaint.

And if you’re going to describe poop as “fecal residue” and skin oil as “sebaceous gland secretions,” the least you can do is follow through on your forced intellectualism and refer to farting as “flatulence,” you pompous priss.

If the person is that smelly, I don’t think it’s a big deal to receive a note asking them to use proper hygiene, even if it’s this long. You’re a grown up now. You should know better than to not wash. It’s not actually that easy to switch roommates in college, and it’s not fair to make your roommate live with your stank.

Also, very nice, all the people calling the note-writer a lunatic and a psycho. Did you know there’s actually nothing wrong with being anal-retentive or OCD or having autism or Aspergers or whatever might be going on with this person? You guys do know it’s okay to be those things, right?

Seriously? I’d agree with you if anyone mentioned any specific disabilities when criticizing the note writer, but calling someone a lunatic isn’t the same thing as stigmatizing disabilities. It’s not about having OCD or Asperger’s, it’s about his/her tone of superiority and the way he/she is treating his/her roommate.

I have high-functioning autism, I have pretty strict rituals for how I live my life and how I do certain things, but I’d never send my roommate a two-page note outlining all my rituals and insisting she do exactly the same, with the implication that she didn’t know how to take care of herself. If there was something smelly on her side of the room I’d just be like “Hey can you wash your bedding please? Something in here smells.” There’s no reason to intentionally humiliate someone and no psychological disorder that causes that sort of behavior… except maybe narcissism.

And, as mentioned, the not-knowing-you-smell thing could also be the result of a medical condition, like depression or a sensory disability. Which is all the more reason to be tactful when pointing it out, instead of pretentious like this.

If the note came after many attempts to reach the recipient in person and in more reasonable notes, than I would become waaay more sympathetic to the note writer. It kind of sounds like it didn’t though. There was no reference to previous conversations, for example.

When I finished reading this note, my instinctual reaction was to stand and give the note writer a round of applause. Brilliantly executed, right to the jugular. I thought the directions, though maybe a bit over the top, were a masterful way of demeaning the note recipient, without blatantly calling him an imbicile.

To the people on team note recipient, clearly this person has an issue showering, doing laundry or keeping tidy. From what we’ve learned in the note, he is literally living and sleeping in his own sweat, filth and odor. They are obviously college students and the fact that an 18+ year old hasn’t figured out basic hygiene yet is sad and disgusting. This person needs to head the advice of his roommate and clean the fuck up. Ain’t no defending this nasty mother-f’er.

I’m jealous of everybody who has never met someone who didn’t know these basic rules of personal hygiene. Some people really have no idea that daily bathing, routine laundry, and basic cleanliness are required to not be a walking biohazard.

The only reason that normal people who had concerned parents/caretakers know this shit is because we learned everything in this note over a period of years. It’s unfortunate if this guy made it to 17/18/whatever without someone informing him of this stuff, but that’s no excuse to not learn.

I just remembered this story from college: MY college boyfriend “Andy” had an older brother, “Evan.” Evan is a bit odd, but extremely smart (engineer who worked on the space shuttle). While in college, Evan was into weight lifting, but would shower only once a week. He figurd, “I’m not DIRTY, so why should I shower?” It got to the point where his roommate and friends were bribing him with weight lifting magazines in order to get him to shower.

Finally, his senior year, his dad sat him down and said, “I understand that you don’t think you need to shower every day. It doesn’t matter. If you want a job, and if you want to KEEP a job, you must shower every day, no matter what. Even if you’re sure you don’t need it, just do it.”

He followed his dad’s advice, grudgingly, but only as an employment-related reason.

Then he made a ton of money working for NASA and retired to Hawaii around age 40, where he lives a somewhat hermit-like lifestyle.

Toy, that’s my guess. Makes me wonder, though, if he’s on the autism spectrum (and I don’t throw that around regularly) or has some other thing like that going on. Brilliant, but not cut out for being a sociable guy.

You know, my friend’s kid has problems showering. He actually does have aspberger’s and the sensory part of it is often enough to throw him into a meltdown. Drives my friend nuts because he’s becoming a Teenaged Boy… and not smellin’ so great.

on dorm living – yes it was sometimes an exercise in patience and tolerance (not a good experience with frosh roomie and about the boyfriend of next roomie – well, less said the better) but actually those were a great four years. There was always someone nearby to chat with when you had writer’s block or burble at when you got a brainstorm. There were discussions in the hallway that sent your brain into creative overdrive. Shared laughter and tears – the best kind of community including the rather gentle pranks played on people who irritated us by missing a community norm. But really – great unique experience and good practice for the being tolerant and being tolerable that keeps my marriage working.

Wow. This guy is on a one-way trip to getting soap-in-a-pillowcase’d. Furthermore, $2k? $2k for a semester? This guy can go right ahead and get fucked. I’d tie him up in his sleep and cut on him to teach him how to respect my desire for him to be fucking silent and ever-not-present.

Judging from the sheer level of passive-aggressiveness this note is dripping with; the author is probably in the double digits of attempts to trying to get his roomie to clean up. Moreover, from the level of filthiness described in the note, I can only surmise that the roommate is either a spoiled douche who never had to clean up after himself (and likely doesn’t pay a dime for tuition or cost of living) and/or has some sort of mental issue. In my experience, it’s typically the latter.

I hope the recipient of this note was given, by his uni, a solo room free of added fees because clearly the note-writer is a controlling nutjob. Who could live with that person? What happened to, “Dude, you’re stinking up the room. Wash your crap or I’m talking to the RA.” Instead he/she writes a novel of bossy weirdness? Lordy.

Is it just me? Or is this the neatest fricking handwriting anyone can read? It’s like they either have a genius IQ or OCD or something. I read about a scientific study on handwriting and how really smart people have really neat handwriting.

The handwriting is so precise. And the PS paragraph looks like it is actually written in italics. The roommate needs to just move out before he wakes up one day to this guy standing over him with a knife.

He starts the note with “I’m detecting some foul body odor coming from your closet and bed sheets” — Clearly homeboy has been snooping around his bedroom while he wasn’t there. And counting his farts in his sleep. Creepy!